When it comes to personalities and employment roles, extraverts have traditionally done well, as they tend to express confidence, dominance and enthusiasm easily – all traits typically associated with good-performing employees. After all, someone expressing anxiety, emotional volatility and an overall neurotic personality in comparison will hardly make a better employee, right? Not according to […]
Subject: Psychology
How Time of Day Impacts on Business Conversations
It is standard practice for corporations to have a conference call with stock market analysts after quarterly earnings are released. In this call, executives make a presentation concerning the earnings report then take questions from the analysts. It is these conference calls that researchers from University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and NYU’s Stern […]
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Video Games for Learning and Development
From the Atari arcade games made popular in the 1970s-80s, to Angry Birds on iPhones across the world, video games have grown significantly in popularity and sophistication over the past few decades. This year sees the 65th birthday of the first patented video game, the ‘Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device’. Most of today’s workers have […]
Balancing Extravert Leaders and Pro-active Employees
A research study set out to examine how effective extraverted leadership actually is on group performance, and what characteristics on the part of employees also play a role in this. This is extraversion as described as ‘a tendency to engage in behaviours that place oneself at the centre of attention, such as seeking status and […]
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The Effect of Feminine Charm in Negotiations
‘Damned if they do, damned if they don’t’ — this is usually the unfortunate impression/management dilemma faced by female executives. If they adopt male behavioural traits typically associated with strong leadership, they are devalued for appearing too masculine. Yet if they favour a more vulnerable stance, they are dismissed as less competent to their male counterparts. […]
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Resolute Leadership, Coordination and Corporate Culture
"What makes a good leader?" is one of the most asked and researched questions of the past few decades. Finding a convincing answer is both more important now than ever and more difficult because we live in a world where an increasing amount of information is being produced and communicated. According to Professor Patrick Bolton, […]
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Grapes of Wrath: How Self Control Leads to Anger
Prior research has shown us that self-control can lead to increased aggression. Building on that, we can now show that people often get irritated by their own self-control. Furthermore, it is not just anger and aggression that increases, but also a general difficulty in keeping any undesirable behaviour in check. In the research behind this […]
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Understanding High-Stakes High-Performers
From the point of view of a decision maker, performance in critical moments matters much more than in other moments. Psychological skills impact that performance, and the pressures faced when making a decision should also be taken into account when analyzing behaviours. To consider whether the ability to ‘rise to the occasion’ varies between individuals, […]
Three Competencies Every Entrepreneur Should Develop
Are entrepreneurs born or made? Commonly, characteristics such as risk seeking, assertiveness and vision are considered typical of a successful entrepreneur. But these are innate predispositions or aspects of temperament; by using them as yardstick, it is wrongly concluded that only certain types of people make good entrepreneurs or are capable of worthwhile innovations. Instead, […]
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Matching Decisions to Decision-Makers: via Our Testosterone Levels
Does testosterone play a role in moral decision-making? A study of 117 graduate students at Columbia University looks to find the answer. They set out to see if individuals high in testosterone (measured using saliva samples) are more likely to make utilitarian decisions, specifically when doing so involves acts of aggression and social cost. Participants […]
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